We’re happy to announce the 2nd Annual Louisville Craft Beer Week. For nine consecutive hop and malt-packed days, from Friday, September 16, through Saturday, September 24, LouisvilleBeer.com will work with the city’s devoted Craft Beer enthusiasts, brewers, and establishments to organize and present Craft Beer festivals, tastings, seminars, Homebrewing classes and more!

Louisville Craft Beer Week is a distinctively local celebration that seeks to educate and to raise awareness of the American Craft Beer Revolution at the local level, to showcase the incredible variety, dynamism, and expanding market presence of Craft Beer in Louisville, and to promote independent local establishments.

Louisville Craft Beer Week is a collaborative local mission. American Craft Brewing has re-established old traditions and created entirely new ones, and is closely tied to emerging “buy local” principles. Local Craft Brewers are partners in the economic sense, perpetuating success by making the pie larger, and keeping money in our community.

Louisville Craft Beer Week is economic development. Craft Beer’s demographic is increasingly dynamic, but traditional patterns remain unchanged: youthful, college educated, well-traveled and affluent. The Internet is filled with urban revitalization success stories with a brewery as part of the scene, beginning with Governor John Hickenlooper’s Wynkoop Brewery in Lo-Do (Denver) in the 1980’s, to Against the Grain’s new brewery and restaurant inside Slugger Field in 2011.

Louisville Craft Beer Week is all of us – brewers, wholesalers, package retailers, pubs, bars, and restaurants – but most importantly, Louisville Craft Beer Week is you – craft beer lovers living, working and playing right here in our city. Your patronage and enthusiasm makes it happen for all of us, and we thank you.

PLEASE NOTE: Louisville Craft Beer Week is about independently-owned, American Craft Breweries that brew their own beer. We had previously listed a few Goose Island events, but after several objections, we have agreed to removed them from our calendar. Goose Island is owned and operated by InBev, parent company of Anheuser-Busch. They do not meet our criteria.

This e-mail from a local brewer sums it up best:
“I am opposed to the planned Goose Island event, and the promotion of that event through Louisville Craft Beer Week. Cantillon is stretching it as well. I realize you guys are doing the best you can with all this at the last minute, but what does Cantillon and Goose have to do with Louisville and Craft beer?”

The subject is open for debate (and we have our next Pint/CounterPint topic), but the events have been removed from our calendar. Would you like a voice in this? We are putting together a panel of contributors from every branch of the local craft beer scene to guide this and other local beer events in the future. If you feel like you have what it takes, work or actively participate in the craft beer industry, and want to be more involved in the local beer scene contact john@louisvillebeer.com. Conformist or dissident, you have a voice that deserves to be heard.

When you’re out and about during Louisville Craft Beer Week, always drink responsibly and whatever you do, don’t drive drunk.

Schedule

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